Report: Google Working on Its Own Gaming Platform, Codenamed Yeti

Google is testing the waters to see if developers might support a new streaming based gaming platform

Google is working on a new gaming platform that will utilize the best of tech to allow gamers to "stream" games like 'The Witcher 3' to lowly spec'd hardware, or even within a Google Chrome browser tab.

The platform, codenamed 'Yeti', will rely on streaming an will include a Google designed piece of hardware to deliver games to people's homes, according to five people that gaming news site Kotaku talked to.

The streaming component of the service would work much like GeForce Now, where most the the work of rendering the game's graphics would stay on servers, allowing the gamer's device, whether it's a PC or a tablet, to require relatively low specifications.

Sources say Google has already met with game developers to discuss the potential of Yeti, and may even consider acquiring entire game studios to support the platform.

Game streaming is seen as the next big thing in gaming, where both the console upgrade cycle and the cost of upgrading gaming PCs are seen as barriers to game development. Both Microsoft and EA have recently launched their own game streaming initiatives, for example.

The biggest hurdle facing game streaming is Internet bandwidth, which for many, is still far from being good enough for non interrupted streaming at the highest quality. Google's expertise in pushing data into people's homes, thanks to its vast network of servers located around the world, could give the company an advantage in this area, as is the company's Google Fiber project, which is attempting to build an ultra fast broadband network that could achieve speeds 100 times faster than the current network average.